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Health and safety management Health and Safety. What's your reaction to these three words? Do you sigh and roll your eyes? Explode? Think "oh no" and wonder if you can be signed off work? Well, I wouldn't blame you. Health and Safety has a bad reputation - but this is due more to taking things to the extreme than the concept or law deserves. Having been a manager in a risky environment - a hostel for single homeless men and women, many of who has substance misuse problems and/or mental health problems, frequently coupled with poor life skills - I know all about the need to risk assess everything. I wrote loads of risk assessments, discussed them with staff and reviewed policies and procedures at team meetings and still there were incidents. Why? Frankly, the root cause was attitude. People often have conflicting attitudes to health and safety -remember your reaction to the three words at the start of this article? People can either blithely ignore it or become very rule-bound by it. I have had staff on both extremes. For example, two intoxicated hostel residents were heading for a fist fight. What did the staff member do? Leave the room and get help? Nope. She stood between them to try and break it up and her face was the recipient of two fists. She was shaken and mildly injured, so she was sent home. When the fire department was on strike a few years ago, the fire alarm in the hostel went off. While sure it was a false alarm, residents were evacuated and the green goddesses showed up. They asked a member of staff to accompany them into the building and get a ladder so they could check the loft space, where the alarm was showing a fire. They needed to check the space before they could give the all clear. What did he do? Get the ladder and help them? Nope. He refused on the grounds that there was no health and safety procedure written to cover working with outside people - how did he know they were trained to use the ladder? Another member of staff stepped in to help. I would like to add that I wasn't there both times these incidents happened. Both of these incidents required investigation, which took up a lot of my time. Both incidents caused disruption within the staff team and among the residents. More importantly, both incidents highlight the problem of attitude. I am always amazed at how many people think health and safety is the manager's job or the Health and Safety Officer's job - anyone but theirs. When I run training courses and we talk about health and safety, it surprises people when I point out they as employees have a legal obligation not only to comply with known procedures, but to inform their manager of any concerns. Everyone has the right to refuse to work in what they genuinely believe is an unsafe environment, and they have a responsibility not to put themselves or others at risk. So what can you as a manager do about the attitude people have about health and safety. Create the opportunity for people to see health and safety in a positive light. This starts with you - believe that at it's heart health and safety is a good thing. Involve your staff in risk assessments. It may be there are hazards you are unaware of - or that your staff are unaware of. It will help you to know what their perception of what they see as hazards, and it will show up potentially risky behaviour and attitudes. By jointly risk assessing. Greater understanding should follow and it is more likely staff will comply with the rules. It also demonstrates a business that care and hopefully, it will build a positive attitude which will show itself in safer behaviour. And that's good for business.
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